Update on Cyrodiil Performance & Upcoming AOE Tests

Lamiai

ZOS, the reason we play PVP is because of the combat style and current lag kills that, removing the combat leaves us nothing. I really hope these "tests" show that and they actually spend money on improving the servers like they do for MYM instead of removing the reason people play.

alainjbrennanb16_ESO

• Test 1 – Shared global AOE cooldown - 3 second timer. This test adds a global 3 second shared cooldown to any AOE ability. This means that when you cast an AOE, you will not be able to cast another for 3 seconds. For example, as a Templar, if I cast Ritual of Retribution, I wouldn’t be able to cast Puncturing Sweep for 3 seconds.
• Test 2 – Individual AOE cooldown - 3 second timer. This test adds an individual AOE cooldown to each AOE ability. This means that when you cast an AOE, you will not be able to cast that same AOE ability for 3 seconds. For example – as a Templar, if I cast Puncturing Sweep, I wouldn’t be able to cast Puncturing Sweep again for 3 seconds.
• Test 3 – No cooldown, global ramping AOE cost. This test adds a global ramping AOE cost for each AOE cast. Similar to how streak or roll dodge works, where when you cast an AOE you receive a debuff for 5 seconds, each stack of the debuff increases the cost of any AOE cast.
• Test 4 – Individual AOE cooldown – 3 second timer, global ramping AOE cost. This test adds an individual AOE cooldown to each ability as in test 2, but also combines that with a global ramping cost from test 3.

[/quote]

@ZOS_RichLambert my only issue with these tests is test 1, which will kill aoe builds in pvp for the week, i know the tests are required, but to kill aoe builds and force peeps in to play only one way is not good, aoe builds have no brust damage but rely on constant damage, thus you will be forcing them into single target

MirkoZ

Qbiken wrote: »

MirkoZ wrote: »

The cost ramping probably will be chosen to be the real fix , so pls let them test, it will not ruin nothing.
With the cost ramping u can still spam the AOE but ofc not for 2 hours

The entire templar healing toolkit has AoE elements to it, how do you expect a solo magplar (or even in a smaller group of 2-4 people) in PvP (especially nocp) to survive when your main selfheal (breath of life) is un-sustainable after 2-3 casts?

All 4 suggested changes are awful and could/will kill so many classes and playatyles in PvP if implemented. The idea if ZOS even considering anything remotely close to this is sad....

U speak like u already know the amount of cost ramping, pls let me know it if u leaked some info

Firstmep

Unified_Gaming wrote: »

L_Nici wrote: »

Well, I played a bit around on the PTS now there they have 3 seconds individual cooldown on the same AoE Skill, and I have to say it is not as bad as thought.

My Stamsorc still works fine since it only has Hurricane and Quick Cloak as AoE and buffs.

My pretty new AoE DoT based Necromancer actually worked pretty well too, I would only change Reverse Slice to Executioner to get one source of constant spammable damage, because using Reverse Slice would cripple the DPS to the ground, only being able to execute every 3 seconds is pretty useless. Stampede is really strong with Maelstrom 2h and doesn't really need to be spammed anyway, Caltrops stay on ground, so 3 seconds doesn't matter there either, same for Deadly Cloak once applied it stays I don't need to recast it. Overall I could just rotate around that 3 seconds, it actually helped my sustain a little, because I couldn't recast some skills directly after use, if it lagged or something and didn't need to pay double.

Stamplar and Magplar are a bit worse of there, Jabs are a wasted slot with that, but you can still rotate around other skills pretty well, Healspam won't work anymore of course, which can be a good thing but a bad thing as well, depending if you are solo or in group. Solo thats pretty bad, in a small organized group you can get covered by your members (Which btw. will lead to the fact that Ballgroups are still as overperforming as before, if one can't heal right now, 10 others do it instead, same for their AoE damage, if one can't cast 10 others do it).

So overall a 3 second individual cooldown could actually be a pretty nice change, and would bring a new awareness about your precise rotation instead of just spamming one skill to win.
A Global Cooldown on the other hand would be destructive to combat and ruin the PvP, so if any of that changes has to come, please let it be the individual cooldown.

The issue is that it applies to nearly all magicka heals so you can't heal yourself properly. Magicka struggles vs stamina as is and being unable to heal would make most magicka toons useless even in groups.

Magicka groups layer heal over times, you can

MirkoZ wrote: »

Zenimax: we put 3 sec cd on AOE skills.
Templars main: oh aw! That should fix the lag... Wait, jabs is AOE? OH *** PLS ZENIMAX NO , DON'T PUT THE CD ON AOE PLS OTHERWISE I CAN'T SPAM MY OP SPAMMABLE , PLS ZENIMAX I WILL DONATE U MY HOUSE

Yes all the ballgroups are made of entirely of templars, jabbing 20+ ppl constantly.
I'm sure that's what's causing the lag in cyro, not the 156 different aoe hots stacked on every member of said ballgroups.
The reason Templar mains are furious about this change is Beacuse jabs/sweeps for the most part is single target oriented spammable, with a very tiny amount of splash damage.

imnottrolling

FatherDelve wrote: »

All I can say is, that i have way less Performance Problems with 40 random zerglings around me, then having 8 Ballgroup Members spamming every 1 second a *** of abilities at 5 meters.

Imagine using icy gate/chains all the time in cyrodiil kekw

Sugaroverdose

MirkoZ wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

MirkoZ wrote: »

The cost ramping probably will be chosen to be the real fix , so pls let them test, it will not ruin nothing.
With the cost ramping u can still spam the AOE but ofc not for 2 hours

The entire templar healing toolkit has AoE elements to it, how do you expect a solo magplar (or even in a smaller group of 2-4 people) in PvP (especially nocp) to survive when your main selfheal (breath of life) is un-sustainable after 2-3 casts?

All 4 suggested changes are awful and could/will kill so many classes and playatyles in PvP if implemented. The idea if ZOS even considering anything remotely close to this is sad....

U speak like u already know the amount of cost ramping, pls let me know it if u leaked some info

Yeah, they'll make .1% cost ramping so this changes do nothing to resolve root of issue.

Unified_Gaming

Firstmep wrote: »

The issue is that it applies to nearly all magicka heals so you can't heal yourself properly. Magicka struggles vs stamina as is and being unable to heal would make most magicka toons useless even in groups.

Magicka groups layer heal over times, you can

What would you suggest solo people or smaller groups do? Zergs have numbers so can layer them but solo and smaller groups can't as easily and you then have the issue with bar space. But the biggest and issue is that this punishes magicka and not stamina overall. Nearly all magicka classes are impacted as their heals are aoe overall. This change impacts nearly 250 skills, most of which are magicka.

nml

The proposed changes are akin to amputating your leg because you don't fit into your old shoes anymore.

Katheriah wrote: »

Have you like... completely, utterly lost your mind? I thought April Fools was in friggin April?

Did you not notice the servers were performing really frigging fine during Midyear Mayhem, even though everyone and their mother was in there? Will there be a live test where we just get some more server hamsters and potatoes and we get to keep our gameplay as intended?

I know performance issues can give a real headache. When I'm not saving Nirn, I'm trying to make sure an application with an average of 1000 online users stays up and running. I know it's nothing compared to ESO, but I do know fixing performance issues is not about limiting core features and pissing users off. Sometimes you just have to admit you need to give that thing some more server juice to keep it running the way your users want it. And yes, you need resources for that. Sometimes it just works like that. Changing your whole idea of what combat should look like should not even make it out of the brainstorm session where some idiot shouts this and everyone laughs about it. Remember what Cyro is about? Big groups fighting big groups. Do you want me to single target a zerg to death?!

Optimizing code? Big yes.
Looking for chances to make it run smoother? Ofc.
Limiting AOE, a feature your users enjoy and for some classes need? What the actual ef, ZOS.

I'm actually willing to put a please in here. Please. do. not. make. any. of. this. permanent.

SilverKatz

Smallscale PvP dies，Templar dies,Warden half dead,DK half dead.
What is left in pvp?
Sorc,NB, Zerg are the beneficiary of these changes.
Any one else smell the nepotism here ? ZOS STOP BUFFING THE CLASS THAT YOUR OWN EMPLOYEE PLAYS
why not make this game a round base , and u need pay for the tokem of creating a gody class of NB / sorc ?
I am sure newbie will love it .

silver1surfer69

Lamiai wrote: »

ZOS, the reason we play PVP is because of the combat style and current lag kills that, removing the combat leaves us nothing. I really hope these "tests" show that and they actually spend money on improving the servers like they do for MYM instead of removing the reason people play.

im just quoting this to get it up here a 2nd time.

silver1surfer69

I think: Whatever you do, at the moment it is:

Too many people with too many possibilities for the server power!


(Lets say you can fix the problem, which i dont think; as ive gotten to know you, you will add more people then, cause this will bring you more money and then we have the same situation and problem we have now in the future.)


-> Where is the cut off/balance point between your lust for profit/server load/player tolerance?)

silver1surfer69

Here is what i just wrote to fengrushs video:

Listening to you and thinking bout this for days now (and years in all) im at a point where i think: we will never have a lag free game + zos is constantly adding/allowing more ppl. The only solution working sustaining is imo: ZOS says here is the cut off, this game/our servers can only handle this amount of players online - you have to wait to logg in (or they increase server power, which is least i expect to happen if this is possible at all - hell freezes over first).

Firstmep

Unified_Gaming wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

The issue is that it applies to nearly all magicka heals so you can't heal yourself properly. Magicka struggles vs stamina as is and being unable to heal would make most magicka toons useless even in groups.

Magicka groups layer heal over times, you can

What would you suggest solo people or smaller groups do? Zergs have numbers so can layer them but solo and smaller groups can't as easily and you then have the issue with bar space. But the biggest and issue is that this punishes magicka and not stamina overall. Nearly all magicka classes are impacted as their heals are aoe overall. This change impacts nearly 250 skills, most of which are magicka.

I already suggested to make certain magicka heals self only.

Rapid regen, healing ward, honor the dead, resistant flesh etc.

Demonhunter

The reason people don't play in Cyrodil has nothing to do with combat it has to do with the extreme LAG issues, just because you increase cool-down on abilities it doesn't mean that combat won't be fun. There are lots of examples of mmorpg's with cool-downs even more than what Zenimax is proposing.

So if Zenimax succeeds in increasing performance with this idea, people will join Cyrodil and fight even more. Unfortunelty those people who are against this has to do with guild politics, because there are people who spam AOE's in Cyrodil and become unstoppable with no counter play what so ever. Just yesterday, there was a zerg ball of say 8 players against 30 players for over an hour with lag trying to kill them. It just doesn't make sense, ESO wasn't made to play with unlimited resources and AOE spam. You can't play GOD in any world im sorry.

It has been going on for years now and zerg balls and lag are killing the game, not increased combat cooldowns. So hopefully, this will pass the test and increase performance

silver1surfer69

Analogy:


- We have 1 horse and 100 people that have paid to ride the horse.

= It is not working.

-> The solution we want to try now: making the people lighter.


=>This is self-deception and not sustaining!

scorpius2k1

Zenimax


Playerbase

npuk

Demonhunter wrote: »

The reason people don't play in Cyrodil has nothing to do with combat it has to do with the extreme LAG issues, just because you increase cool-down on abilities it doesn't mean that combat won't be fun. There are lots of examples of mmorpg's with cool-downs even more than what Zenimax is proposing.

And the reason that people are playing PVP on ESO rather than these other mmorpgs is that the combat system is way smoother.

Demonhunter

jcmlongb16_ESO wrote: »

Demonhunter wrote: »

The reason people don't play in Cyrodil has nothing to do with combat it has to do with the extreme LAG issues, just because you increase cool-down on abilities it doesn't mean that combat won't be fun. There are lots of examples of mmorpg's with cool-downs even more than what Zenimax is proposing.

And the reason that people are playing PVP on ESO rather than these other mmorpgs is that the combat system is way smoother.

That's a pretty broad statement, just cause your increasing cool-down it doesn't mean the combat system won't be smooth, in fact it will be smoother? If you eliminate lag, combat gets smoother regardless of cool downs.

Hayhurst

1. Limit groups to 12 man rather than the current 24 man limit.
2. Remove heal stacking and make healing abilities/sets unique meaning you cant have two sources of the same heal.
3. Add a fat cool down to Purge.
4. Remove artefacts, we dont need more reasons for people to group up.

Positive impact on performance without changing the fundamentals of the combat system and you've lowered the impact of ball groups. Feeding two birds, one scone.

Joxer61

Why 3 secs?

Unified_Gaming

Joxer61 wrote: »

Why 3 secs?

Maybe it's all a ploy to help close the gap for low apm people? If 3 seconds then everyone is low apm and thus balanced...

Elsonso

Joxer61 wrote: »

Why 3 secs?

Honestly, it sounds like a SWAG. Random number. This is why I still feel like this whole thing is just more in the "band-aid" line of thinking. They are still working around the edges while avoiding the core problem. I don't think they are asking the right questions, yet. However, the tests should hopefully answer the ones that they are asking.

EcclesiaFides

NirnStorm wrote: »

IMO this test is gonna work out great, will definitely fix performance issues.
On another note, if we disabled combat altogether in PvP, that will also fix performance issues.

This test is basically "lets see if making our dynamic combat system less dynamic, will fix performance".
Of course it will. But at what cost?

Nothing more need be said. I mean, case closed. Might as well shut this game down and remake it from the ground up before you introduce changes like the ones proposed. Ridiculous.

EDIT: Also, let's assume the best case scenario. You proceed with the proposed changes. You've promised to "rework" skills in response to the changes. Okay, fine. How many hours of coding will that take? How many patches will it take? What skills will be reworked? What skills will not be reworked? How will they be reworked? What will combat look like after all the reworks (however long they take) are complete? Will this even be the same game at that point?

How is this option cheaper than investing in additional code changes or greater server capacity or some kind of infrastructure change?

Icarus42

We should have known in the beginning, back in 2014, when they announced their game would run off a "MEGA" server, that we would end up here. I t always sounded fishy to me lol, "MEGA"!!

Been waiting for Zenimax to fix the lag for about 5 years now... I am extremely pessimistic that these new tests will equate to any kind of improvement. I guess you could say its been a "MEGA" disappointment all in all.

On that note I really do wish you all the luck in the world Zenimax and hope the solution you come up with will somehow make this game function how we would all want it to.

We the players would want nothing more than to be "MEGA" happy and excited about playing in Cyrodiil again! May the force be with you Zenimax, prove us wrong PLEASE!!

dubrilya

Cyrodiil became unplayable after your late "performance improvement" changes.
After one of these "improvements" was a time when i got kicked out every 10 minutes.
Now it's just lagging like never before - improvement indeed compared to the previous state.
Instead of ruining a good amount of pvp builds, you may try to look at what may have gone wrong in those patches.
Or if that doesn't work, you could decrease the number of players allowed at once in Cyro - that would result in longer queues in peak time, but better than having a ruined pvp due to lags or awful combat changes.

Demonhunter

Why do people always have to go back in history and judge things, if your at war and lost a battle it doesn't mean you should quit. Keep trying, and not trusting ZOS is no excuse. I rather keep trying to improve performance rather then give up.

And yes it will improve performance so like I said, if people don't like cool-downs especially EP players then please leave game and play something else.

dubrilya

Demonhunter wrote: »

Why do people always have to go back in history and judge things, if your at war and lost a battle it doesn't mean you should quit. Keep trying, and not trusting ZOS is no excuse. I rather keep trying to improve performance rather then give up.

And yes it will improve performance so like I said, if people don't like cool-downs especially EP players then please leave game and play something else.

The first part of your comment is tells the exact opposite of the second. "Keep trying" - "leave the game".
I'm sure that most of the commenters, myself included love this game, and we are trying to prevent changes which will make it considerably worse.
Telling people who do not share your opinion to leave the game is easy, but not smart.

RobZha

Crazy. I've spent quite a lot of hours on this game over the last few years, but last week decided to get back on FFXIV for a bit where most skills have cooldowns but got addicted to it again, then come back here to see this. Totally weird, as I stopped playing FFXIV after they stopped supporting the PS3 years back, and have only just got back to it for the first time since playing on a PC instead.

And I think FFXIV is great and it works, but there's a key difference : you can have hotbar after hotbar filled with skills to use and have a choice of literally dozens of skills to use at any one time and IU options that allow us to arrange those skills and hotbars pretty much however we want on the screen. Here we have two five skill bars (that we even have to press a button for to switch between) and two ultis. So introducing a cooldown on all aoe's isn't going to go anywhere near as smoothly obviously.

At the same time I think it's important to mention that I don't PVP in that game, so this isn't any attempt to make out like PVP would be fine here working like FFXIV. I'm mainly saying that with access to so many skills the cooldown doesn't stop the game from being good, and there's also a main stat for skill speed along with some skills which can as you level, gradually chip away at the cooldown itself.

I've often thought that the lack of skills we have access to has always been a big factor in why I've often got sick of playing though and that maybe in the future this could be looked at so we have more variety in combat.

But the lag is a nightmare.

I quit for a year because of it, came back during the PVP event and last week when I went on to FFXIV I just stayed away from this (apart from logging in mainly to remain active in two trading guilds) and gradually realised how sick of it I was again.

The performance updates were the main reason I came back I think, to see how much had changed before I try to get a new PC soon, and see if things really had improved. Then not long after I'd sometimes be in situations where I'd disconnect almost every single time I got to a keep where a battle was taking place and that'd never happened in all the time I'd played previously so clearly that hasn't worked.

But if this does go ahead it needs classes to have a serious revamp because with so many cooldowns and so little skills that we can access compared to some other games, it's clear that it's not going to be the same game any more.

And as a Templar player a lot of the time lately I'd be fine with seeing a huge issue fixed here by making sweep/jabs a single target ability (or add a morph so that this can be done. Maybe moving away from the limited choice of two morphs could help here as well and give us more choice.) That's not going to work for some or many players, but it's hard to see how the class can be played properly in any way in PVP if such a key skill can only be used once every 3 seconds.

In short though, I'd rather see a series of big changes to this game so that it can actually be played instead of small alterations and this crap lag carrying on that makes so many players leave the game because it literally cannot be played properly in PVP.

RobZha

And when we're talking about server upgrades to make the game work without adding things like cooldowns, it's clear after so much time has passed that ZOS isn't going to do that. It could be that only one option would allow that to take place, and that could be to like FFXIV again, make the game require a monthly subscription so they have stable, regular money which could make them consider it.

But that's a whole different thing that'd make a lot of players insta-leave, and there's no way I'd ever actually suggest that a game should start requiring something like that. Especially when many of us might not even be able to afford it at times, leaving us with no ESO to play at all. And even more especially, when some players might not be able to afford it at all, or simply might not want to pay for it after seeing the state the game has been in for so long.

I might leave FFXIV at times over the next few weeks to play this a bit again, but when the update hits I think I definitely will. It might be a complete failure that's going to result in PVP being totally broken, but at the same time we might for the first time in years actually see the lag gone. It's going to suck for a while if they take such drastic steps, but maybe after several updates to classes and skills it might be playable again, and without the lag.

A key to it if this happens could be extra morphs for many skills switching them to single target instead, and more skills maybe, so that we can at least try to strike a balance of cooldown and non-cooldown that works.

Major_Lag

Icarus42 wrote: »

We should have known in the beginning, back in 2014, when they announced their game would run off a "MEGA" server, that we would end up here. I t always sounded fishy to me lol, "MEGA"!!

[snip]

EcclesiaFides wrote: »

NirnStorm wrote: »

IMO this test is gonna work out great, will definitely fix performance issues.
On another note, if we disabled combat altogether in PvP, that will also fix performance issues.

This test is basically "lets see if making our dynamic combat system less dynamic, will fix performance".
Of course it will. But at what cost?

Nothing more need be said. I mean, case closed. Might as well shut this game down and remake it from the ground up before you introduce changes like the ones proposed. Ridiculous.

That certainly appears to be the direction they are taking, yes.
First deleting the PvP, then quite possibly the PvE as well - leaving only the [snip] and the housing/fashion endgame for the whales to engage in.

---

@ZOS_RichLambert
Oh, and by the way - if we're turning ESO into a WOW clone anyway, can we please get rid of light attack weaving and make it an auto attack as well? That would also likely improve performance by reducing the amount of calculations the server has to process.
EDIT: and please let us know when we will have flying mounts, those are also long overdue

[Edited to remove Bashing]